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Super Tuesday Tornado Oubtreak

| February 9, 2008 @ 10:26 am | 9 Replies

The “Super Tuesday” tornado outbreak of this past week (February 5-6) will go down as one of the worst tornado outbreaks on record in the United States. It is difficult at this time to determine exactly where it will rank, since we don’t have final numbers on individual tornadoes and intensities. However, with the number of fatalities now approaching 60, this is the deadliest tornado outbreak in the U.S. since May 31, 1985.

We in the Atmospheric Science Department at UAH have already begun some preliminary research into the outbreak, specifically the 7 tornadoes in Alabama. The better we understand how the tornadoes formed Wednesday morning, the more we can help NWS and TV forecasters in future events. However, I want to say that the National Weather Service did an excellent job of issuing warnings for the tornadoes in Alabama, and the broadcast media did an excellent job of getting the word out.

Some of the things we will be looking at:

1. A rapid drop in surface pressure over Alabama early Wednesday morning that may have increased helicity, causing the storms to re-intensify after 300 am and produce tornadoes.

2. The possible effect of topography and land type on the tornadoes (see Jason Simpson’s post below).

3. Detection of tornadoes by radar using advanced techniques.

4. The possible role of gravity waves in producing some of the tornadoes.

5. The lightning characteristics of the storms before and during the tornadoes.

I will have blog posts on some of these topics in the near future.

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